Student Showcase

The Mysterious Woman

Valentina Kaganovich

I never really believed in ghosts or witches or anything like that.
A lot of people in my country, Belarus, used to tell me stories about
seeing ghosts, but I never believed them. I didn't believe them until
the night I saw the woman.

It was a cold night, and it was raining. I was only about fourteen
or fifteen years old. We had just finished dinner, and I went to sit
in my doorway to look at the rain. I then saw a woman in the rain.
At first, I didn't really think anything about it. She walked slowly.
She had a long kind of dress that blew in the wind. As she came closer,
I could see her carrying a small child, and I heard her singing to
calm her crying child. When she was about twenty feet away from me,
my mouth dropped open. I could see right through her. She walked past
me as though I was not even there, still singing to her child. I ran
inside the house and told my mother what I had seen. She told me about
a woman who used to live in the area we used to live in. No one ever
knew how they died. They say that on some nights, you can hear her
singing and trying to make her baby go to sleep. From that night,
I believed in ghosts!